This interview is part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.

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Interview Transcript

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Victor Franco, 1972 July, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview with Victor Fracno
Conducted by Barry Schwartz
July 1972

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview
with Victor Franco in July 1972. The interview was conducted by Barry Schwartz
for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

BARRY SCHWARTZ: This is Barry Schwartz. And this is another interview for the
Archives of American Art in the series The Art World in Transition. I’m
interviewing today Mr. Victor Franco who comes to us from the Los Angeles and
San Francisco area. Victor, perhaps we might begin this interview if you would
explain a little bit of your background and how you first got involved in community
arts?

VICTOR FRANCO: My background in community arts stems from my activity in community
development as an activist. I first got into community development in the Chicano
area of Los Angeles as editor of an underground newspaper which was directed
to the Chicano youth. We were sort of responsible for the walkouts that occurred
in the spring of 1968 after we had been in existence for about six months. After
a year of, say, the editing approach to community development, I left it because
of a lot of political strife within the community itself.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Do you want to identify that community?

VICTOR FRANCO: Yes. This is East Los Angeles. Toward the latter part of the
life of the Inside East Side newspaper, which I was founder and editor of, I
became involved in trying to establish a gang federation. It was called La Junta.
I worked with them for about a year. This ended around 1969, so I was involved
with them from 1968 to 1969. I organized gangs and edited a newspaper which
was one of the big political forces in the Chicano community in Los Angeles.
There was a split between us and La Raza and LUCA – which is the League
of United Citizens to Help Addicts. Too much energy was expended in fighting
each other, so I decided to leave the political field and get into something
that would reach the masses of the people. These activities were just reaching
a very minute portion of the community; they weren’t affecting the lives
of the masses of the people. So I figure we’d have to go into a cultural
approach and change. The community was polarized between the anti-activists
and the activists, which put the activists in a very, very small portion of
the community. So I started the organization called Mechicano Art Center as
a result of my leaving the activist role.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: One implication of that, is it not, is that people engaged
in direct politics designed to unify a community very often have the opposite
effect, whereas people engaged in the cultural life of the community are able
to create unity and cohesion among the people in the community?

VICTOR FRANCO: Because the tool of arts – how can I say it? – has
a subtle impact on the life style of the community which really isn’t
very threatening to the people. Everybody wants a change but they don’t
want to change radically or politically; but if change comes down to them very
subtly in the form of culture, then they’re willing to accept it. This
is true for the majority of people – businessmen, police, activists; everybody
is, say, pro-cultural change. Mainly, people have been dealing for too long
with the thought that the only way to uplift the public is to uplift them economically.
They all forget that you have to uplift people spiritually too. And if you can’t
do both, then you can’t have successful change or revolution. Well, we
filled that gap and we got support from the entire community.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the Mechicano
Art Center?

VICTOR FRANCO: Okay. The way I started the Mechicano Art Center, because of
my affiliation in East Los Angeles, was to regroup, leave the community, and
get all the institutional contracts I needed. I figured I had to meet the entertainers
and so on who would give us support. And get contacts in the galleries. So we
got a gallery started on La Cienago, actually right off La Cienega and Melrose.
My intent was to do that, then leave that area and go back into East Los Angeles
with the tools, and the contacts necessary to implement the project successfully
there, because for every project you have initial problems that come down and
you’ve got to be able to deal with those problems in order to survive
for the period until funds come in – the funding period takes about a
year. The way I planned to do that was to get some kind of recognition for the
artists who were participating by selling their paintings in the art world so
they could make enough money to feel they were not just wasting their time.
That worked out really well. We had exhibits going throughout the city in all
different types of institutions, gallery shows, and whatever. So they were getting
recognition outside the community, and inside the community, they were getting
the energy needed to push for a year without any kind of money. We had to raise
the money out of our own pockets. Everybody was starving. The brunt of it came
down on me. Basically I financed the entire thing and it got too hectic. Now
this couldn’t have happened unless you had guys like Rea Tilano and Frank
Martinez. Moira Bright is a very key person in this organization. She happens
to be co-founder of the Mechicano Art Center. Now after a year of struggle and
really pushing hard, we began to get the basic concepts of Mechicano to the
community. We succeeded through the media, and through total community support
by pulling off, for example, key Chicano festivals. The first one was in 1970
at the Palladium. It was called the Chicano MAD Festival – MAD standing
for Music, Art, and Dance.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: What size population are we talking about?

VICTOR FRANCO: We’re talking about 600,000 people.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Prior to the Mechicano Art Center, was there very much cultural
activity directed at the Chicano community?

VICTOR FRANCO: There was none, absolutely none. This is why it was so successful,
and it came about so rapidly because there was none. There was an attempt by
the Plaza de la Raza but they’re just a paper organization. At this time
they’re not doing anything and they’re not dealing with the Chicano
community on the same terms or with the same goals that we have. You see, we’re
uniting and getting support of the activists. For example, our opening exhibit
was a photography exhibit of the riots of August 29, 1969. It was very anti-police.
That was the type of photo exhibit we pulled off. The photo exhibit came from
La Raza magazine. This is the same group that I had split with because they
didn’t understand my concept in long term organization. But by contributing
to the exhibition, they followed with very good backing of the organization
by all the activists, so I tied up the activists. After that we pulled off very
traditional type of art exhibits. The police weren’t too uptight. From
the first exhibit we had, they thought we were another activist organization.
So you see I tied in both of them by telling them, “Well, that’s
just a photo exhibit,” and then following it up with regular traditional
art exhibits. We then had total support of the community – of the businessmen,
of the activists, etc. We started to gain momentum. Then I pulled off El Mundo
Chicano Festival at the Ash Grove last summer. Ed Pearl happened to be the guy
who contacted me. Again I let the artists themselves program the week-long festival.
If the guys in theater – activists – wanted to do street theater,
they went ahead and did it. I don’t like to dictate what’s going
to come out. Whatever comes out is the expression of the group. Again it came
out very well. After that we got funding from the Catholic Church, from the
campaign for Human Development Conference I think. They gave us $14,900. This
shocked me because I only asked for $9,900. I was after local money. They turned
down the local proposal and three months later they had me in their plank for
national monies and they came up with $5,000 more than I asked for. I don’t
know why they did that. I can’t figure it out. But I imagine it was because
of the positive program we had in the community. After that we had another big
move – the bus bench project.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Would you describe that?

VICTOR FRANCO: Right. The bus bench project came about from the efforts of
the community Doctors Hospital which is adjacent to the Mechicano Art Center.
They approached Rea Tilano, who happens to be the workshop coordinator, and
asked him if he would want to get thirty artists to do thirty bus benches –
the artists in turn would receive money from some kind of competition in which
the people would vote on the best painting on the bus benches. That gave a little
stimulation to the artists. But I think they would have done it even if there
were no money involved because it was such a beautiful thing. But, you know,
you can’t get ripped off by the hospital getting free publicity and the
advertising firm that handled the bus bench getting free publicity, so the money
was justified in the artists’ sense.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Describe the billboards, too.

VICTOR FRANCO: The billboards are actually being done through the Parks and
Recreation Department of Los Angeles. They asked us to get some artists and
we provided some of the artists for this project. We encouraged our artists
to participate. It happens that our artists were the ones who were chosen to
do the billboards through some competition. I think there are only two billboards.
One happens to be in Echo Park right now, not in East Los Angeles, but it’s
still a Chicano community. And, at the moment, there’s one in West Los
Angeles. The trend seems to be going through a lot of favorable response, and
I hope it gets into East Los Angeles. What I’m going to try to do is increase
the bus bench art program in East Los Angeles along with the billboard art concept.
I think we can get these advertising firms to meet the public service requirements
by, say, helping to beautify the environment. And I think that might snowball.
One reason I’m saying this is because Doctors Hospital has asked us if
we want to do fifty more benches this fall. We will be paid for it. I can see
Foster & Kleiser Billboard Company doing the same thing. It seems like it’s
picking up momentum. Now another project that the Mechicano Art Center is involved
in is trying to make some kind of transition from the graffiti, which is an
environmental pollution problem in our view. Now other people may think it’s
an art form, but I don’t think it’s an art form because the concept
of art is not taken into account by the guys who do it. So what we’re
trying to do right now is to get the gang federation to work with us in a program
that hopefully will be funded by the Department of Education under the Environmental
Education Act. Now, if we do that, then we would have dealt with the total environment
that we are conscious of which, I think, has to go through a transition from
a polluted state to an aesthetic state. This would make it part of the life
style of the community and would spiritually uplift it. So what we’re
after really is dealing with bus bench art, which would get rid of a lot of
the advertisements on the streets, and billboard art, and making the transition
from graffiti to fine art in the form either of murals, which would be a representational
art, or non-representational art in the form of super-graphics. I can see this
happening because we have, I believe, eight murals up right now in Los Angeles.
Okay. Now there’s one on Downie Road and there’s one going up right
now on Lincoln Heights. Then I think we have one or two in Doctors Hospital,
and those in front of our Mechicano building. Those walls are normally defaced
by local groups writing on them. Now one reason I think this is possible is
that all the bus bench art and all these murals that have been up for a period
of from two to six months haven’t been defaced. We were wondering if they
would be defaced or not – how the community would respond to this art.
It was a favorable response because they weren’t defaced.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Here you’re really trying for a new relationship between
the artist and the community, aren’t you?

VICTOR FANCO: And the gangs. Well, let’s be specific – the community
we’re being specific with are the gangs – right? The gang members,
not the residents, of the community are defacing the walls. So when we’re
talking about “the community” we’re talking about the gangs
only. This is why we’re being specific in our approach to the community;
we’re dealing directly with the gangs. You see, if they cooperate, then
we can succeed in the program, because they’re the ones who use this for
status, for recognition. You know, everybody wants status and recognition, and
we get it in different ways. The gang members of the community get it that way
– it’s really gratification of the ego and immortality, the whole
thing, you know. So if we are successful in doing this I think that in, say,
five or ten years we can really change the face of the community. The approach
right now, say, of constructing all these new types of housing projects, new
building, parks or whatever, is really ineffective in the environmental development
of the community because they are always defaced. And if they’re defaced
it doesn’t make any difference whether they’re new or not. You still
have dead pollution – you still have the same type of consciousness of
the community. So the main thing to do here is to construct these new structures,
parks, or whatever, but also to prevent them from being defaced – have
them respected by the community. There’s a natural tendency to do art
work on the walls, so if we can help them along and make it a little bit more
aesthetic, which would then be much more appealing to the residents, it would
make them happier and you’d have a happier community, say, a spiritually
uplifted community. So this is what the Mechicano Art Center is trying to do
right now. In the future I think we’re going to try to give music to the
people in the form of concerts, try to tie up the Parks and Recreation and the
Musicians Union Trust Fund, along with some street theater. We would try to
get street theater that will be relevant to those particular groups which are
the ones that need a type of spiritual uplift. At this point they’re the
ones that are downgrading or upgrading the community. That is probably the total
picture of the Mechicano Art Center past, present and future.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Well, I think one other point is that you have a certain kind
of relationship to the Mechicano. There are other people involved in the running
of the thing and as a cultural activist, you have chosen for yourself a certain
particular role. Maybe you should rap that out.

VICTOR FRANCO: Okay. As an activist I always fade out of a program. And when
you fade out, you have to replace the program with those people who have to
go through that stage of development which would then in turn fade them out
and bring more people into the cultural aspect. You do this through exposure
with outside communities, and national people like the conference on community
arts and community survival did. Now this type of development tends to develop
the consciousness of the neighborhood kids who participated in the project with
the conference. This immediately sets up a broader foundation, such as Frank
Martinez and a couple of other guys in Center who are only high school kids.
And these high school kids getting this kind of exposure is automatically going
to have a direct impact on their peers. I feel there’s a snowballing effect
happening and I see the cultural foundation broadening and having a total impact
on the entire community. And as a political force, I don’t see any kind
of better political instrument than to have the entire community behind a project.
If you want to back up certain projects in the community, or denounce certain
projects in the community, you have their support as a tool because people are
going to have respect for you. You’re also going to have tremendous amount
of people behind you because they’re all involved in the project. That
is what we’re trying to do - to get more people involved in participating
within the group. I feel that the way to do that is always phasing out the directors
and they in turn getting into another phase of the cultural development that’s
happening in Los Angeles. That’s what’s happening with Leonard Castellanos.
Eventually, next year if the Alliance gets funded, as I see it, Leonard will
phase out there, Tilano will become the director, and Armando will become the
workshop coordinator.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: What you’re saying in effect is that the old model of
the community organization, which consists of only a few individuals with a
tremendous amount dedication who work for a number of years and then get turned
on to something else and the organization falls apart, is changing. You’re
replacing this old model with a new one which sees the chain of command constantly
changing and people constantly growing in the positions they’re in, and
then going on to a more overview, a larger role, while other people, right out
of the community, take over the past positions, providing a financial base,
community support, and creating an enduring community organization that doesn’t
depend on single individuals, and on a kind of economic or fiscal tentativeness.

VICTOR FRANCO: Right. The only way that this project can ever maintain or perpetuate
itself is if you remain relative to the community. That is really important.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: I think the next thing to go on to is that you, as the person
who was coordinator of Mechicano, went on to broaden your own scope and range
of activities, and that leads us here to the question of the Los Angeles Arts
Alliance. What is the Alliance all about, how did it happen, and what role did
you play in it?

VICTOR FRANCO: Okay. This will go back about a year ago which would be sometime
around July, 1971. For about six months prior to that, say from about January,
1971 to July, 1971 I was visiting the Neighborhood Arts Program in San Francisco
just for my own education. I was working with the mission project called Galleria
de la Raza which is headed by Rene Yanez. Now they were acting almost as a model
for Mechicano at that point. I was trying to implement in East Los Angeles the
type of program they were doing. I learned from them. That’s the way everything
works – everything works by a learning process; very few of us are the
creators. So I was just taking what they were doing and trying to implement
it in East Los Angeles. That worked very well. After going back and forth to
San Francisco it got to a point when I started working with the black knights
explosion, which is headed by Michael Catlett, and with Roberto Vargas, who
was one of the community organizers for the Neighborhood Arts Program, which
is under the San Francisco Arts Commission and with Eric Reuther, who happened
to be the administrative director of the Neighborhood Arts Program. So about
a year ago I arrived at the whole concept of the necessity for the Alliance
to happen in Los Angeles; that is, the necessity of having a neighborhood arts
program-type of project for the basic purpose of funding, of support in the
form of services and coordination of projects.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: You’re talking about a large coalition of separate community
organizations that act in unison for funding, avoiding overlap of resources?

VICTOR FRANCO: Right. I’m talking about that in terms of what has to
happen in Los Angeles, not what was happening in San Francisco. What’s
happening in San Francisco is a city project under the Arts Commission, which
is a mayor’s commission. Now they are limited - they don’t have
a coalition. They are just a service center for all the neighborhood art centers.
They provide money for community organizers and it is very minimal – they
deal with two hundred dollars a month for four organizers. They use this money,
for, say, the creations of festivals, of workshops, or whatever. These guys
are to just disperse the money as they wish. And the pressures come to them
from their peers. So it works out sort of well that way, because you don’t
have to deal with red tape and bureaucracy; you don’t have to make a request
for money which goes to the mayor, and comes back to this guy who rejects it.
It was so slow, and that seemed the basic reason for this neighborhood arts
program failure to begin with. So Eric came in and restructured the program
to deal with the success of the program this way. And it became a success. Eric
was very good at being innovative in that sense. Anyway, in Los Angeles I was
asked to set up a meeting between the Parks and Recreation and a group called
the Fine Arts Council of Los Angeles or something like that which was headed
by John Stilyun and John Blaine. Now they asked me to set up the meeting in
San Francisco between the group – they knew I was dealing with and was
friends with Eric Reuther. After I think the first half hour of the meeting
we had a break and Eric said he didn’t want to deal with them. He said,
“Again we’re dealing with institutional people who are not going
to relate to the street people. This is going to cause a program failure.”
Eric realized that the only way to have a successful program in dealing with
street organizations is by gaining their trust, by directly relating to the
street on their terms. So at that point I decided I was going to take the task
of organizing this project in Los Angeles. Then I did decide with Leonard Castellanos.
He was there and I asked him if he would help me in the undertaking of this
project. He said yes. We talked it over and decided that the only way the thing
could happen was by not dealing with governmental agencies. When you do that,
you’re not free to do what you want – you never know what limits
you can go to as far as programming goes. So we just said we’re not going
to deal with the government, nor with institutional people. Therefore we decided
to bypass the organization started in Los Angeles that wanted to create a neighborhood
arts program type of project. We said we’re just going to bypass them
and organize the street organizers. They would come to us in the form of directors
of the Black Arts Council, the director of the Watts Towers Art Center, the
Mechicano Art Center. At this point, Leonard Castellanos was director of the
Mechicano Art Center. That’s when I stepped out; I said, “Leonard,
now you’re the director of the Mechicano Art Center. I’ll drop out.
I’ll just be president and I’ll take a lesser more background role
with Mechicano.” Then I had to deal with the Asians. They didn’t
want to participate in this program. They just weren’t ready for it. So
John Ito said, “Well, I don’t want to be on the board of directors.
That’s too much for me. I’m merely trying to get the Asian community
together.” So a rationale behind not getting any more blacks was that
I had to deal with Jim Woods. Jim Woods is one of those people who just can’t
deal with anybody on a peer level. He had to be the super-power in the organization.
I figured that this type of organization couldn’t have that type of person.
There would be too much conflict. We all have to relate to each other and we
all have to be social, we all have to be friends. So I got another black person
who happens to be a good friend on mine. He’s a pharmacist. He helped
set up the Big Brothers, which is a nonprofit service organization in Los Angeles.
I got him to be on the board. And I got Myra Murphy who was working with Parks
and Recreation. She and Dr. Robert Haas are the only two white board members.
But I felt that we needed this type of board membership which wasn’t really
street people. They were the bridge that we needed to have between the street
organizations and institutions, and the shock absorbers between the minorities
and the majority. We structured the board that way so we won’t directly
confront the white institutions. We’ll have these people deal with the
white institutions and it will be easier for them to accept. And that’s
been working out very well. So we structured the board with five street organizers
and two non-street organizers but who are sympathizers. You have to structure
things that you, you know. People want to do it democratically, call a huge
community arts meeting and have a vote on it, but it doesn’t work out
that way. That’s not the way you organize. I felt that the next step was
to get an advisory board which would have no power but which again would be
the bridge between the institutions, government agencies and the board of directors
- the majority of which were street organizers. I got John Stilyum who happens
to be a consultant to the Board of Education in the art department, I guess.
Then we got Eric Reuther from San Francisco who is a friend of mine and who
became our advisor. The credibility there is great because he had a successful
program in San Francisco and everybody in Los Angeles was looking to them as
a model. He agreed to be on our advisory board. Then we got Clare Doossen, who
is director of the junior art center which is a city agency – they’re
trying to be community arts. She accepted our invitation to be on our advisory
board. Recently we got the head of the municipal art department, Kenneth Ross,
to be on the advisory board. And we got Bill Agee who is director of the Pasadena
Art Museum

BARRY SCHWARTZ: I think we have a sense now of how you went about doing that.
Perhaps it would be good to indicate how far the Alliance had come along and
what role you played this year prior to the American Council of Arts and Education
Conference on Community Arts and Community Survival.

VICTOR FRANCO: Okay. Using these people I have just mentioned as the only credibility
we had, since we had no background, no track record, we had really nothing concrete
to use for any further organizing. So the next thing we had to do was look for
a project that we could undertake to be our track record. Two projects came
to us. One was an arts expo which was to be held at Cal State, Los Angeles,
which was going to be an art exposition of all the community art groups –
theater, music, the whole thing. That didn’t work out too well because
there was going to be a hassle between us and Cal State. We didn’t want
to be tied down to any kind of institution and be responsible for our actions
in dealing with them. I mean I didn’t want to be responsible for what
we did in direct relationship to the school. They wanted some kind of commitment
that we wouldn’t blow their scene. So we just said, “Let’s
drop you.” The next thing that came up was this conference which was to
be held in Los Angeles. It was going to deal with community arts as a tool for
radicalizing the educational system. That’s the way it came down to me
from Dr. Bob Hawes who was on our board of directors. He was approached by Allen
Sap. Okay, now Hawes called me and said, “Would you like to undertake
this project?” I talked to the group. They said no, and I don’t
blame them because I really didn’t want to do it anyway. But I felt that
if there was anything in it for us that we could use for organizational purposes,
then we’ll do it. I’d use what we could get to deal with the organizers
in the community who don’t particularly want to be studied again and be
ripped off by the white man again. So I had to deal with the blacks, Chicanos,
and the Asians on those terms. I told them that if we undertake this project
we can use it for our organizational purposes. I said we can use the project
to organize the Alliance in the six months that we’re going to document,
say, a book and a film for the A.C.A.E. and we’ll use this for funding,
we’ll use this for developing our organization, and everything will be
okay then. We don’t have the money, so let’s use that and give them
the conference. But, at that point, we didn’t really realize the significance
of the conference. As we started getting into the conference, all the organizations
started really realizing that they were being ripped off; they, not myself.
The guy who was organizing this project was not dealing with them in street
terms.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Who was that?

VICTOR FRANCO: John Blaine. So they felt we were getting ripped off again by
John Blaine who is a white man making $1700 a month and he’s just here
for the bread – he’s not relating to the street people on street
terms. He’s just cutting them off saying, “Okay, fine, you did you
thing, I’m sorry you can’t be on the documentation film.”
You know, after promising them that. He just had no way of dealing with not
coming through on a commitment. By the third month of this project everybody
was turned off it, everybody wanted to drop out. They didn’t understand
that there was something beyond John Blaine and that we could patch that up
and then go ahead. I had to call a meeting of all the groups and I explained
to them that John Blaine didn’t understand the psyche of street people
and that is not his fault; he still is a good guy, he still has a lot of potential.
I finally had to prove that to the groups. After doing that, the project started
moving again. But around May the project was about ready to fall through. People
were going to pull out because they just didn’t want to deal with John
Blaine and more John Blaines who were going to come from back East. Right? I
told them, don’t worry about it. That was patched up but it was never
understood by the people in San Francisco because they felt they were being
ripped off. So I had lots of problems. San Francisco was talking about using
Los Angeles as a model and here they were the model to begin with in the neighborhood
art sense. In the neighborhood art support sense everybody was saying that the
Alliance was the model for the country, the model that would be needed to help
the growth and the survival of all the organizations by supporting them financially
and administratively, too. Most of the problems in community arts are administrative
problems. Everybody is dealing with administration and not creating programs.
So if those administrative problems are removed from their programming and absorbed
by another organization which they trust, then they can be free to create more
projects and they will be the artists they want to be and not be administrators
as they are at this point.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Well, apparently you got the Alliance together. Now how do
you think people felt about the conference by the time it was over?

VICTOR FRANCO: Okay. By the time it was over there were mixed feelings. The
Los Angeles area was very happy because the panelists and the conferees were
very happy, which means funding, which means their survival, their existence.
In that basic sense they’re very happy. Whereas San Francisco is very
uptight. They feel that the Alliance, or the Los Angeles group, ripped them
off by using them as a model. Well, they just feel that we used them in our
organizational process.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: They may be sorry they didn’t do it in San Francisco?

VICTOR FRANCO: Yes, that’s basically what it is.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: But it was a success?

VICTOR FRANCO: Yes. I think it’s an ego thing that they’re undergoing.
They feel that the money will be bypassing San Francisco and that it will be
going to Los Angeles. At this point the program is collapsing in San Francisco.
They’re starving, they want to exist. So in that sense it was a negative
response. So we have two responses; the San Francisco and Northern California
people were very uptight; the Los Angeles people were very pleased because they
can see some kind of security in their future existence.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: How many groups are you talking about?

VICTOR FRANCO: There are fifty groups in Los Angeles County. The problem there
is that no one organization knows any other organization and there is not any
kind of attempt to have any interaction between these organizations, basically
because all of them are barely making it, they’re barely doing their own
thing. So what I’m going to try to do is to help in the interaction by
my directly creating programs which would bring the Alliance into a specific
center and pulling off a community function. In other words, I would do the
organizing for them and they would get the credit for, say, a festival or a
concert or a super graphic project in their community which isn’t being
done any place else except in Mechicano and Compton Arts Academy. Right? All
the other centers are not really community arts programs at this point in my
eyes. I feel that community arts should deal with the masses of the people.
They’re not dealing with the masses of the people. They’re training
people in film making, and these guys are not making it as film makers. A lot
of money is being squandered; a lot if money is being spent in workshops. I
feel that all the money that’s going into these programs should be seen
visually. The way to do that is to get projects out into the community and away
from the center, the center being the focal point of activity within the community.
So I’m going to try to implement these ideas myself, knowing that these
people here are not going to do it but will support it if somebody else does
it for them. We’re going to need publicity for these projects. The way
we’re going to do that is by getting out flyers and posters and what not
that are going to be needed to make the neighborhood aware of what kind of programs
will be happening in the future. This equipment can also be used for any other
fund-raising activities that the centers might have. I think the only kind of
equipment we’ll have for publicity is a Gestetner. Basically I think the
Gestetner can only be used for flyers. All this has to be coordinated. And,
well, advertising through newspapers, radio, and television media. And in the
proposal we’re going to have a small budget for a PR firm which happens
to be the Wagner Public Relations firm that did the publicity for the conference.
And they’re very good, you know. They can take the brunt of just doing
that task in, say, relieving the staff and me from having to deal with the press
and all that bull shit. So within a year I see this will be coordinated by a
newsletter which will be mailed out to every community arts organization, to
every arts institution in the city and hopefully might be mailed to a lot of
national institutions if they request it. With this newsletter I think we’ll
try psychologically to stir up some kind of spirit in community arts which isn’t
there right now.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: We don’t have a hell of a lot of time left and it might
be good at this point if you would just reflect for a moment on what you see
is the importance of community arts and what role it has to play.

VICTOR FRANCO: Let me just deal with one more thing. After this is done you
have to deal with the State of California. I feel that if you organize the State
of California, create an arts commission which will directly fund all these
organizations, then you will have the survival of these organizations secured.
But unless you do that you’re not going to have a successful program.
So the ultimate aim right now is to get the entire state organized along these
very basic lines and have money secured by the state government. That can only
happen if we get a new governor. I can see Jerry Brown, Junior being that next
governor and he’s very receptive to this type of program, to this type
of community development. I can see that within two or three years, if everything
goes right, that the funds will be secured for these organizations and their
survival will definitely be there. But unless this is done I can’t see
community arts going any other place, I can see community arts dying in the
near future. To get to your question, the direct role in community arts basically
is just the spiritual uplifting of the people, the masses of people that are
downtrodden right now. The minority communities are spiritually dead and I think
our main goal is to awaken them spiritually to the point where they can become
politically conscious of their environment and what’s happening to them
and their lifestyle and hopefully to stimulate them to do something about their
condition. I think basically that’s what community arts is. It’s
a tool for social change. It’s a tool for community development, which
is social change. I can’t see any other reason for community arts.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: So community arts have the potential of unifying a community
and creating a cohesion among so many diverse groups that are often antagonistic
to one another. It might well be that the community arts organization might
become somewhat transformed into dealing more with the political and social
needs of the people once they were together?

VICTOR FRANCO: I can’t ever see the people being together so I can’t
see it becoming a political tool overtly; I think it will always have to be
done covertly. I can’t see it ever transforming to, say, an overt political
tool.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Well, I think in that comment there are a few indications that
the situation in Los Angeles is very unique and different from places like Minneapolis
and New York. You told me the other day that you had a little theory about Los
Angeles; the point you made was that when you begin to implement certain ideas
in Los Angeles the community is so spread out and is not so sophisticated or
troubled politically that you can carry off certain things.

VICTOR FRANCO: I feel that this is also true for California as a whole. I think
that’s why California will be implementing the first type of community
Arts commission that’s needed for the survival of the community. And I
don’t think it could happen in any other place. I can’t see that,
because you’re dealing with politics and politicians and that gets pretty
heavy because the power thing in California isn’t as tight in politics
as it is in Chicago, Illinois, or in New York. I think a direct action by the
governor’s office to create under executive order a community arts commission
won’t have any kind of repercussions on his part, and he won’t have
any kind of challenge by the traditional art institutions if it’s done
right. Whereas I think a lot of hassle would come about in New York and maybe
Minneapolis or Minnesota. I think California is very unique and I think Los
Angeles is where constructively it’s going to begin. You know a lot of
the burden is borne by the people in Northern California – Berkeley -
and at the same time in New York. They’re the ones who are getting all
the bumps on the head suffer all the political strife, whereas in Los Angeles
the next stage in development comes less hard; you know it gets smoother and
easier; and from there I think it goes back to the state.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Might it be that the problems that arose at the conference
between San Francisco and Los Angeles might be the beginnings of the kind of
strife you see in other places?

VICTOR FRANCO: I don’t think so because Eric and I are very good friends
and all we have to do is iron out an understanding between each other’s
roles in this whole thing and I think everything else will follow. The neighborhood
art centers in San Francisco listen to Eric as the organizer for the northern
groups, and in the south I think people more or less trust what I say; if we
both get together I think everything else will follow. And since we are personal
friends I can’t see that kind of problem happening.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: How would you feel if you saw Community Arts, Community Survival
Conferences in a number of major cities across the country?

VICTOR FRANCO: Dealing directly with the cities?

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Right.

VICTOR FRANCO: I don’t know because I don’t know how many community
arts groups there are like in Minneapolis or in Pittsburgh, etc. In Pittsburgh
I hear there are only three or four. So I don’t know what kind of successful
conference you could have in Pittsburgh or in New York. I’m not aware
of the significance of it in these cities. But if a national conference happened,
then I think that would be a very constructive thing. You know all these art
schools from the East Coast and maybe several in the Midwest can only see Minneapolis
and Chicago having something. The West Coast getting together and having a national
Community Arts, Survival Conference, creating a national community arts alliance,
I could see that being a very, very positive move in this country. Not within
the cities on the East Coast or in the Midwest which I think would just be a
waste of a lot of money. I think the next step is to create a national community
arts alliance.

BARRY SCHWARTZ: Well, Victor Franco, I want to thank you very much for this
interview.

VICTOR FRANCO: Well, thank you.

END OF INTERVIEW

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Victor Franco, 1972 July, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.